


Plus ça Change

by thebabytiger



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Author's AU, F/F, Gen, bandit regina, pre-SwanQueen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 12:45:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4101466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebabytiger/pseuds/thebabytiger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Plus ça change - short for "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose," French for "the more things change, the more they stay the same."</p><p>As Henry finds Emma, and they go off to find Regina, Emma muses on how some things transcend realms and realities, and how constants can always be found even when it seems like everything has changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plus ça Change

Emma looks up, wariness fading into pure relief as Henry comes into view. She had known, or at least had been able to guess, that she wouldn't be stuck in this alternate reality for very long, but it had been easy, in the few short days she had been there, to start to begin to think otherwise. It hadn't helped that overlapping memories swirled in her head; the tangle of memories was hard to sort through, and clearly had not been implanted as skillfully as the false memories Regina had given her not so long ago. It had been easy, when she had first dropped into this world, to sort out what memories belonged to what life, and to know that the despair felt by another version of herself after years of imprisonment had no bearing on her situation now. The clock hadn't truly started until the moment she, and the others who couldn't remember anything of Storybrooke, had been dropped into this reality, and so if she were going to be rescued, it would be now, more than before.

It did smart just a little bit to always have the kid playing knight in shining armor, but she supposed that this was not only part of his charm, but was also what made him Henry. At least she, herself, knew and understood what was going on this time - it had been hard enough for him to break the curse the first time around, with one mother totally ignorant and another actively sabotaging him. Surely at least one adult had to be of some use, this time, and she would be lying if she had said she hadn't spent some time in that cell thinking about how to be the Savior in a world she knows little about. 

She doesn't realize she's close to tears until she's pushing a teary "Henry" past chapped lips, totally bypassing her son's introduction. They must be, she realizes, in the minority of people who remember the other world, and he still hadn't been sure, even as he had come to rescue her, if she would know him. 

"Mom?"

"Henry, Henry," she says, like it's the only word she knows.

"You remember," he responds, somewhat stunned, as she stumbles forward in a rattle of chains to wrap him in the best hug she can manage.

"I knew you'd find me." And she didn't, but she knew someone would, or that she would find them, and that they would not be stuck in this world for forever. But now that he is here, she thinks even more of how some things don't change, even across worlds, and that this much she had learned three curses ago, and so she is entirely unastonished to find that it is Henry, always Henry, who will find her and bring her into the rest of the story.

Which is why she is also unsurprised to find that the next step in saving the world and returning them all to Storybrooke, is for Henry to bring her (and Hook, who is sweet and nice and familiar but so, so very wrong for this type of thing) to meet his mother Regina. And it is so very strange to have everything be so different, but the same, as she eavesdrops on the greeting of a mother and a son she's never had.

"Mom!" Henry says with winded relief, and it's so unlike the first time where a reluctant Henry had not wanted to be back in Storybrooke at all. "I knew you'd still be here!"

"You again?" Regina asks, exasperated and dismissive, and this too is unfamiliar; Emma has never heard Regina be anything but utterly attentive to Henry, even before the first curse had broken and she was working against him, and this is a far cry from a distressed woman running down the walk to pull her son into her arms. "Listen, I don't have time for stories. I need to hit the road before the Evil Queen has my head." Emma wants to laugh at the sound of that sentence leaving the lips of the (former) Evil Queen, but she knows that things are different here, and this conversation just proves it. This Regina has never had a child, and though she is clearly kind to Henry, he is nothing more than a stranger to her. Emma remembers the feeling well, but also knows that she'd had a small advantage over the other woman in that she had known her son was out there somewhere. It was one thing to have someone show up and claim a role in your life that you know is possible, and quite another to have someone show up claiming to be your son when you know firsthand that you've never had one. 

"Wait, I brought someone else this time," Henry tells her, standing his ground with the patience of someone who has had to do this song and dance with adults, with one mother or the other, for most of the past several years. Emma takes that as her cue to enter, stumbling down the small walkway into the cave Regina has made her own, and trying to look as sane as possible. "Maybe you'll listen to her."

She ruins any attempt at sanity the instant that she's come to a stop behind Henry, looking up at a woman who is very much removed from the Evil Queen, and tough as nails Mayor that she is familiar with, but who is still, without a doubt... "Regina." She is slightly surprised, at how the woman had not changed at the very core, and also at having spoken at all. Hook had looked very similar, and this had taken her by surprise, but it had not taken much to understand that he was not at all the man she was familiar with. It had not taken more than a really good look to see the differences, but in Regina's case, the only true changes were superficial. That idea solidifies as Regina pivots slightly to pierce her with an evaluating look that Emma knows all too well.

"Let me guess," the brunette begins with a drawl, and Emma prepares to wince because that's the voice that Regina uses when she's about to verbally skewer someone, "you're his other mother?" Her tone makes it clear that the idea is ridiculous, and it's not too far removed from utter disbelief. And all Emma can hear is 'You're Henry's birth mother?', and it feels like deja vu all over again, standing in what amounts to the brunette's front walk, meeting her for what amounts to the first time, and being introduced as Henry's mother. 

And she hears 'Hi.' when she says "Emma," both an answer and an introduction at once, and she knows, just knows, that those simple words are going to be the start of yet another crazy adventure.

Even in an alternate reality, that much, this much, is still the same. And Emma thinks that this much, Henry and Regina and strange introductions with small words that change their lives forever, is all that matters.


End file.
